Chapter 19
Phoenix
Once upon a time, many, many years ago, I kissed Holland Blakely.
It’s not something I let myself think about, because it was an accident. If it wasn’t an accident, it would have been a bad idea anyway. She’s younger; she’s Trev’s sister. I’m self-aware enough to admit that I’ve never viewed her like a little sister, but I’ve never had feelings for her, either. I’ve never wanted to date her.
Right? I’m sure I haven’t.
She has an explosive personality, and when I’m with her, she brings out my explosive side, too. So how did I go from “kissing her was an accident” to “we’re married and we’ve kissed several more times”?
I thought she was Jewel that night—a girl in one of my classes who I’ve long since forgotten—but somehow when I realized it was Holland, the kiss made more sense.
Holland kissed me like she’d been waiting her whole life to do it; that’s not a feeling that’s easily replicated. She doesn’t do anything by halves—kissing included.
No more kissing, I tell myself firmly. She won’t kiss you, you won’t kiss her, and everything will stay neat and safe.
“Judging by the way you’re sighing, you’re thinking about your wife,” Wyatt says, pulling me out of my thoughts .
I look up at him, surprised. “I am. How did you know? Do I sigh differently when I’m thinking about her?”
“You have a specific furrow in your brow,” Wyatt says, pointing to his own forehead. “Right here.”
It’s late on the evening of the Fourth of July, and I told Wyatt he didn’t need to come to the main house tonight, but he did anyway. Just to help me organize things for tomorrow, he said, but I think he gets lonely—and he knows I get lonely, too.
Work is good. Work is safe. Work distracts me from the tingling feeling in my lips and the phantom body I can still feel in my arms.
Why did she kiss me? And why did I kiss her back?
She’s asleep now, I think; the light under her door turned off hours ago, and the only sound coming from her room is the whirring of a fan. We came home together, but we didn’t say a word to each other; we didn’t even make eye contact.
Her eyes looked red, and it caused something horrible and heavy to shift in my stomach.
“Well, you’re right,” I say as that heavy feeling returns. “I’m thinking about her.”
“Mmm,” Wyatt says, keeping his eyes on the folder in his lap. The lamp in my home office casts a warm glow over the room, and my assistant’s glasses glint when he shifts in his chair. “Anything in particular?”
“We kissed,” I say dully. “I guess technically she kissed me. I tried not to kiss her back, but…”
I didn’t try that hard.
Wyatt hums again, but he doesn’t say anything. I watch him from behind my desk, waiting, but he remains silent; finally I speak again.
“You don’t have anything to say about that?” I find it hard to believe .
“I have several things to say, but I’m not certain you’re ready to hear them.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“I have several things to say,” he repeats, “but I’m not certain you’re ready to?—”
“I heard what you said,” I cut him off. “I was just surprised. Tell me.”
He shoots a skeptical look at me, his brow more lined than usual, and I let out a tired breath.
“I mean it,” I say. “Tell me.” Nothing he can say will make this situation any more confusing than it already is.
The indifferent shrug he offers is not comforting; If you say so, it says. “It is my belief,” he begins, “that you and Miss Blakely?—”
“Mrs. Park,” I correct him without thinking.
A little smile twitches at his lips. “Of course. It is my belief that you and your wife have been in a committed relationship for many years.”
My jaw actually drops.
But Wyatt just nods and continues to smile; there’s even a bit of amusement in his expression, like he knows he’s upsetting me with how ridiculous he’s being. “Your love language is arguing. You take care of each other?—”
“Because I told Trev I would,” I say incredulously.
Another nod from Wyatt. “You did,” he says. “And you’ve been very faithful to that promise. But I suspect that even if you’d made no such vow, you would still be taking care of her, and she you.”
“She doesn’t take care of me,” I say with a snort.
“Look more closely,” Wyatt says, completely nonplussed. “I think you’ll find she does, and in ways you’re so used to you don’t even notice them.”
Into my mind pops the image of her handing me my bag of food in the honeymoon suite, my Cobb salad with extra crispy bacon; the image is replaced with her voice, weeks ago, telling me to buy some vegetables so I don’t get scurvy.
“Ridiculous,” I mutter, reaching for my throat to loosen my tie—only to realize I’m wearing a t-shirt.
“She’s the only woman you would have considered marrying, even if you won’t admit it”—I did admit it; to her —“and if she married another man, I’m very sure you would lose your mind.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” I say, but my voice is too defensive, and the memory of her smiling at Briggs earlier is too fresh. She teased me, taunted me, and I lied to her.
If she hugged someone else, danced with someone else, kissed someone else, I would be jealous.
Because she’s my wife, I tell myself. No one wants their wife to do those things with someone else. It’s wrong. That’s all.
“I don’t want to date her,” I say to Wyatt, leaning back in my chair. The leather squeaks, a sound that normally annoys me, but I’m not paying attention.
“I believe that,” he says. “I don’t think you want to date her.”
“Then what could you possibly be going on about?” I say, sighing.
“I don’t think you want to date her. Going out in public, taking her to dinner, going to the movies—I don’t think you like dating at all, no matter who the woman is. But I believe your heart has been ready and waiting to fall in love with her for a very long time. And if she gave the slightest indication that she wanted a life with you, you would be gone, just like that.” He shakes his head. “Dating wouldn’t be enough for you. You would want everything, always. You don’t do things by halves. ”
The exact same thing I thought about Holland, not half an hour ago.
“I think this is good for the night,” I say, standing abruptly. I should have listened when he said I wasn’t ready for what he wanted to tell me.
Because he’s saying absurd things.
“Anything else can be left for tomorrow morning,” I go on. “We should get some sleep. It’s been a long day.”
I see Wyatt look at me from the corner of my eye, but I don’t meet his gaze. I keep my attention fixed blindly on my desk, because I don’t want to see his expression—be it pity or disappointment or concern.
To my relief, he doesn’t insist on staying or continue to speak; he just stands up as well. “I’ll see you at seven, then,” he says in a completely normal voice.
“Sounds good,” I say.
Even after he leaves, though, I keep staring at my desk; once I’ve changed and gotten into bed, I stare at the ceiling.
I fall asleep to the faint sound of fireworks from the mainland.
When I wake up, it’s still dark outside, and something is wrong.
I flip my phone over to check the time; two-thirteen in the morning. Much like the night in the honeymoon suite, at first I can’t tell what’s woken me. I sit bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding, but nothing seems amiss in my room. Black comforter, white carpet, wood furniture, everything in its place.
Then I hear it, though: a sound coming from Holland’s room, low and ragged.
Those are cries. She’s crying.
No—she’s sobbing.
I’m out of bed before I realize what’s happening, and I’ve never left my room that fast in my life. I don’t knock on her door before I enter, though I should; but there’s a frantic urgency driving me, one that tells me this isn’t normal crying.
I don’t turn on the light in her room. I fly to her bedside, where my gaze can only make out the shape of her figure in bed; the light mess of her hair on her pillow, the curled form of her body because she’s kicked all her covers off.
“Holland,” I say, reaching for her. I find her shoulder in the dark and give it a little shake, but there’s no response; just her continued sobs, low and ragged.
Something dangerously close to compassion rises in me as my suspicions are confirmed: she’s not awake. This is a nightmare, and it’s so much worse than I expected they would be.
“Holland,” I say again, shaking her harder. When she fails to respond, I don’t think or plan or consider—I just act, instinct driving me.
I lean down, slide my arms beneath her shaking body, and lift her into my arms.
Her skin is somehow clammy and hot at the same time, but I hold her closer anyway; I carry her out of her room, opening the door wider with my foot, and into my own room. I sit on the edge of my bed and shift her slightly so that her head is resting higher on my chest, near my shoulder, and then I rock back and forth as though she’s a very large baby.
I have no idea what I’m doing, but it feels right, so I keep going .
“Holland,” I say, louder this time, my voice tense. I free one hand and click on my lamp, the dim light spilling into the room. Then I reach for the glass of water I keep by my bed, dipping my fingers in. I bring them to her face, smoothing water over her forehead and her cheeks. “Holland, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
She flinches at the feeling of the water on her skin, so I get some more. As I get her face wet, her cries begin to fade, and her pained expression begins to twitch—relief crashes over me when she begins actively shying away from the water.
“Holland,” I say again, patting her cheek. “Wake up. Wake up—there you go.”
Her lashes flutter for a second, and then her eyes open; only slightly, and she’s clearly not fully aware, but she’s awake.
My racing heart calms a bit as I take a deep breath.
“Oh. This is better,” she says after a moment of looking around. Her voice is sleepy and slow, and the sheen of tears still clings to her lashes.
“What?” I say.
She snuggles into my chest, pressing her cheek against my skin as she makes herself more comfortable. “This is a better dream,” she says, and her eyes drift closed again. “I like you better in my dreams than I do in real life.”
I blink down at her, taken aback. “Do you?”
“Mmm. You’re less annoying.” One hand reaches up to rest on my bare chest. “And more shirtless, I guess.”
I sigh, stroking her hair, my hand moving of its own accord. “This isn’t a dream, so stop talking,” I say. “You’re going to regret saying these things.” I’m going to have to pretend I don’t remember any of this—it’s all I can give her. Maybe I could say I was drunk ?
No. She knows I don’t drink.
I’ll just tell her I was half-asleep myself.
“Of course it’s a dream,” she says in that sleepy voice, her eyes still closed. “We would never do this in real life. You hate me too much.”
An odd mixture of surprise and pain pierces me somewhere around my solar plexus. “I don’t hate you,” I say. “You hate me.”
“No. I hate that when I look at you, I remember watching the paramedics wheel Trev’s body away.” She inhales deeply and then lets out a shuddering yawn. “I feel so guilty. It hurts— you hurt.”
Down in the depths of my heart, something shatters. The memories rise before I can stop them—she and I huddled together, silver shock blankets wrapped around our soaking bodies, Trev lying between us.
A knot rises in my throat; I swallow it, along with those images. Is that what she sees when she looks at me? Is that what I make her feel—pain and guilt?
She snuggles closer, and when she sighs again, I can feel her puff of breath against my chest. “You hurt,” she mumbles. “But you make me—feel. You make me feel so—so alive.”
And another image floods into my mind, one I haven’t thought about for a long time.
Holland, sitting on the side of her ER bed, staring blankly off into the distance—a large bandage on her forehead, limp arms and legs, eyes devoid of light and life.
I remember watching her from my own bed and realizing that I would do anything to take that look out of her eyes—even poke and prod and nag and annoy until she found fire to burn me with. For Trev, I would do that.
But as I look down at her, asleep on my lap now, it dawns on me that Wyatt was right once again: somewhere along the line, taking care of her stopped being about Trev.
“I make you feel alive, huh?” I say, the words reluctant. “That’s good.” I pause, and then I voice the ridiculous question that’s nudging me over and over. “Do you think I could ever make you happy?”
But I’m pretty sure I know the answer to that one.
I stand up, holding her carefully, and take her back to her own room.
“We’re quite the pair,” I say as I settle her into her bed, pulling the covers up around her. “Just a couple of sentimental fools, feeling guilty for something we couldn’t change.” I smooth her hair out of her face. “Sleep well, Holl.”
I don’t hear her for the rest of the night, but I never fall back asleep.